Lumia 900: Redefining the smartphone?

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After almost five years of manic one-upmanship following the initial release of the iPhone, one OEM has finally realized that the future of smartphones lays in the arms of everyday consumers. The Nokia Lumia 900, available today and priced at $450 off-contract (or between $0 and $99 on-contract), is the cheapest, high-performance smartphone that the world has ever seen, and a strong indicator that it’s high time for early adopters to step aside before they’re washed away by mom-and-pop consumers. In comparison, the 16GB iPhone 4S is $650, and the 16GB Galaxy Nexus is around $600.

The key word here is “high-performance,” rather than high-end. The Lumia 900 has a thoroughly middle-of-the-road spec — a 1.4GHz single-core Snapdragon S2 Scorpion (circa 2010!), 512MB of RAM, a 800×480 display, and 16GB of storage — but for Windows Phone 7, that’s ample. A penta-band MDM9200 Qualcomm radio provides LTE coverage in the US, and good worldwide 3G coverage. The only stand-out piece of hardware is the 8-megapixel, Carl Zeiss, capable-of-720p-video camera on the back — but to be honest, this is the one bit that Nokia couldn’t skimp on; WP7 might be able to give an old CPU a new lease of life, but what good is that if the phone has a crappy camera?

Of course there are trade-offs, too. By using older, cheaper hardware, the Lumia 900 is larger and heavier than the competition, and it also has a shorter battery life (7 hours of talk time vs. 8 on the iPhone 4S and 12 on the Galaxy Nexus). And, of course, the biggest hurdle of all is still Windows Phone 7.

I know this is a very tired argument, but you can’t escape the fact that WP7 has just a 4% share of the US smartphone market (and probably much less worldwide). The third-party developer ecosystem is simply incomparable to Android or iOS. While WP7 recently crossed the 70k mark, Android and iOS both have at least 500,000. As a result, WP7 misses official apps for services like HBO Go, Hulu, Sonos, Tweetdeck, and Dropbox.

There are major architectural absences, too. WP7 doesn’t support IPsec VPN at all, and doesn’t have built-in support for VoIP or video calling, or USB mass storage. Windows Phone 8, due out later this year, will fix most of these issues, though, and cross-compatibility with Windows 8 should resolve any app ecosystem issues.

In reality, though, many of these factors are the kind of thing that would put off upgrades or sidegrades — they’re not the kind of thing that a first-time smartphone buyer balks at. The Lumia 900 feels good in the hand, looks attractive, is very responsive, and has most of the features that a smartphone should have.

That’s the key point here: The Lumia 900 isn’t targeting iPhone or Galaxy users; it’s targeting the 41% of the US public who still own a feature phone. If you’re already firmly set on getting an iPhone, the Lumia won’t stop you — but for walk-in customers, the $200 price difference is really quite significant. For customers on the fence — if saving $200 isn’t enough — the Lumia has a bigger screen than the iPhone and a better camera than most Android phones — two factors that could easily sway people towards the Nokia device.

Other tech sites are calling the Lumia 900 a flagship phone, and thus comparing it to other flagships like the iPhone 4S — but that’s like comparing the latest Hyundai with a Ferrari. They’re both excellent cars/phones, but they appeal to wholly different categories of consumer. The Lumia 900 is $200 cheaper than the iPhone 4S!

In actual fact, there isn’t really anything that we can compare the Lumia 900 to. It’s a whole new class of phone — a commodity smartphone that’s priced and marketed for the masses. It has all the trappings of a smartphone, but a price closer to that of a dumbphone. In short, as long as Nokia and Microsoft can convince the masses that this is a smartphone, and yet not directly comparable to the iPhone or high-end Androids — and the “Beautifully Different” ad campaign does just that — the Lumia 900 should fly off the shelves.

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http://www.ratdiary.com spragued

This is the first review I’ve seen that gets the fact that Nokia/MS aren’t targeting niche early-adopters, but rather the untapped mass market that responds to commodity pricing from well-known brands.

Gee, advertising a blog post that links to Ars. That’s not very fair :P

https://launchpad.net/~silverwave silverwave

Well… your review while having an original slant… lets just say it wasn’t as in depth as the one on ars ;-)

http://twitter.com/cpy85 cpy

1$ phones are phones for masses, if i just want to make calls or send sms with phone, any 1$ will do, and they have better battery life too!

Anonymous

Then you never have used a WP before, I am no MS fan far from it, but i love my Lumia 800.

Not because the hardware is so great, but because WP is so easy to use.

Dose it have shortcomings, over my old Galaxy i use to use, sure some, but that’s easily compensated by the user friendliness.

And missing apps, sure there are some, and if there are Apps you cant live without, check first, but i actually no app missing that i really needed, and what i was missing there ware plenty of alternatives for.

And the $1 ore $99 price tag, dose not really make it a free phone, the phone still cost $450, you just paying $20 extra on your subscription.

Ware i live you can aider get your phone with a subscription, or like what lots of people do, buy a SIM only and pay full price for your phone, in the long run your a lot cheaper of.
Because you switch a lot less phones, if you pay full price, instead of getting ripped of true your subscription every month.

http://twitter.com/essiccf37 Aly-Bocar Cisse

Make sense actually.
Thanks

Rahul Prasad

Comparing Lumia 900 to the iPhone 4S is actually not like comparing Hyundai with a Ferrari. It really is not.
It is more like comparing Hyundai with Lexus or Audi.

How is this meant to be appealing? The specs are lousy for a $450 phone. “
using older, cheaper hardware, the Lumia 900 is larger and heavier than the competition, and it also has a shorter battery life”

Great job there, Nokia. The specs on this are roughly equivalent to the Titan. I looked at a Windows Phone at one point but I’m not interested in buying 2010 hardware at 2012 prices.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

Yea, I was thinking about that too. I think the $450 is the RRP, but it should drop. (The Galaxy Nexus seems to have an RRP of $800, but you can get almost $300 off at Amazon atm.)

Again, though, I don’t think specs are really that important when appealing to the mass market. The phone performs well and looks good — that’s probably enough.

http://twitter.com/timverry Tim Verry

Agreed with Sebastian, for most users it’s more about the experience than the specifications. Android phones and the latest iphone have more horsepower but WP7 works great with the hardware it’s given.

Anonymous

Hardware specs define, if anything, only the performance potential of a device. If the device actually gets anywhere close to that potential is something entirely different. Android devices regularly fall far short of realizing that potential. For consumers, it is almost impossible to determine how much they are actually getting out of any particular hardware offering. Even the popular smartphone review sites, whose job it would be to deliver this information, rarely offer more than subjective opinion pieces. Worse yet, these “reviewers” are not solely to blame because the tools required to perform these tests are in their infancy. Most are simply to technical for the average reviewer to use.

No, the Lumia 900 is not the fastest kid on the block, and a small number of things won’t be possible because of that, but anyone with a brain will realize that the definition of “best gadget” varies from person to person. In terms of price/performance the Lumia 900 has every other device on the market beat hands down. Furthermore, a lot of “soft factors” like MS’ update policies are second to none. As a software developer, I find the minimalistic and pure approach MS has taken to designing this OS on all levels very appealing (yes, MS of all companies).

Just because some geeks like Android’s “spec-sheet first” marketing philosophy, doesn’t mean that is the best approach for everyone. Surprisingly, it is even detrimental to Android’s userbase, as OEM’s now engage in what is known as spec-sheet optimization efforts. None of the OEMs question weather or not such optimizations translate into any perceivable benefit.

Anonymous

Has anyone stopped to consider that the “masses” you’re talking about aren’t necessarily balking at the price of the phone but instead at the increased monthly cost of carrying a data plan at $20-$30 per month? And since these “masses” are obviously not early adopters, after all they don’t have smartphones yet, if they *did* decide to buy a smartphone and commit to paying for the data plan they’re not going to buy WP7 phones. Why? The “masses” aren’t early adopters and WP7 is an early adopter platform. The “masses” then are going to go for the well-known, tried-and-proven platforms – Android or iPhone. Both are available at all price points (from free to several hundred dollars) for the masses to choose from.

Ian MacLennan

At $450 perhaps carriers could afford to give this phone away with just a voice plan and not a data plan.

http://www.ratdiary.com spragued

I find your commitment to scare quotes very compelling. Or should I say “compelling”..?

Anonymous

Has anyone stopped to consider that the “masses” you’re talking about aren’t necessarily balking at the price of the phone but instead at the increased monthly cost of carrying a data plan at $20-$30 per month? And since these “masses” are obviously not early adopters, after all they don’t have smartphones yet, if they *did* decide to buy a smartphone and commit to paying for the data plan they’re not going to buy WP7 phones. Why? The “masses” aren’t early adopters and WP7 is an early adopter platform. The “masses” then are going to go for the well-known, tried-and-proven platforms – Android or iPhone. Both are available at all price points (from free to several hundred dollars) for the masses to choose from.

Mario Kadastik

Hmm… a $450 phone should indeed not be compared to iPhone 4s, but considering the Lumia is ca 2010 tech shouldn’t we compare it to say iPhone 3Gs (which you can buy unlocked and contract free for $375 or with contract at $0). Or the iPhone 4 for $549. I’m just saying that Apple’s been smart keeping around the old phone models and dropping the price all the time therefore introducing an easy competitor for the Lumia because you can get the iPhone 3Gs and it’s a decent phone with almost full support of all apps int he app store (sure, some might be a bit tight on the 3Gs specs, but it’s quite a decently specced phone).

http://www.facebook.com/people/Adas-Weber/622729281 Adas Weber

If you’re making comparisons, then the Nokia Lumia 900 is more like the iPhone 4 (not the 3G or 4S).

Anonymous

I have a Nokia 800 and I really don’t see any reason to recommend the device over an iPhone or a good Android handset. The hardware is pretty good aside from a dumb hatch over the USB which the 900 rectifies but the Windows Phone software feels like it needs another iteration to be tolerable. It looks great but it is annoyingly sparse and lacking things that you would take for granted on other phones. e.g. every Android owner takes multitasking for granted but WP offers nothing and its not hard to run into problems because of this, e.g. Skype on WIndows phone is next to useless and of course there is no Viber or equivalent. The app store is also pretty barren. Some apps are there and some aren’t and often the ones which are there cost significantly more money. Nokia’s own apps are getting better than they were when the 800 launched and add value but its nothing you can’t find elsewhere.

Anonymous

I have known a lot of decent products that never sold well and faded away. Either because the company that made them made huge errors in marketing or they simply intro’d a product into a highly competitive market and simply was too late to make any inroads into marketshare. In the end the Windows mobile platform does not have anything that would draw Android or iPhones users to it. Yes, a few percentage of new users will give Windows phones a try. But because its not what their friends have I doubt we will see a huge change in what has already become a Android/ iPhone market.

http://twitter.com/corneea Corneea.com

Until now I used only IOS and Android phones. Last week I had the opportunity to try a Windows mobile and I was like “whattt?…why didn’t I try this until now?”. I’ve started to document myself regarding Windows phones and this way I find out about Lumia 900.
I’ve read a lot also about this launch and also I’ve tried to write a small article regarding it, but nothing compares to try it with your own hands. I’m pretty curios about its usability and advantages over Android and IOS.

http://twitter.com/kiranapatel Kiran Patel

screw this! I want the N9 with android on it…

Jimbo

I see the metric about the 41% of consumers who still own feature phones/dumb phones pretty frequently, as evidence that there’s still a ton of market share out there to grab, but has anybody thought that maybe that’s a chimera?

My opinion is that, at this point, in the U.S., any body who really wanted a smart phone already has one. Out of that percentage of the population, I’d be interested to see how many are older folks (over 50 and retirees) or teens, on their parent’s phone plans, who either don’t care for a smart phone, or if on a family plan, are budgeted and aren’t allowed on a data plan.

The upfront cost for the device is almost besides the point; you’ll be paying the same $80-$100 per month voice and data package that iPhone, Android and Blackberry users pay.

Also, if you’re using an LTE device, like the Lumia 900, you might want to monitor your data, as it’ll be prone to overage charges that’ll kick your monthly phone bill well north of $100 a month.

http://twitter.com/fteoOpty64 fteoOpty64

“like comparing the latest Hyundai with a Ferrari”. This is hardly accurate. Comparing the latest Hyundai with a Camry maybe!. There are other phones which are like BMWs, Porsches and Ferraris. The iPhone 4S as a Ferrari is giving way too much credit to an aging handset.
The unfortunate thing about Nokia is their quality really drops significantly with plasticy design and not a single technical feature that stands out. On paper the camera might like so but in real tests it did not fare well at all. This is a real disappointment, they could have done way better.

The OS is another thing which remains to be seen as being useful and to have long term attraction. The worse that can happen is for owners to really get sick of it within 30 days and switch over to something else. Probabilities looks like 46% likely to go iPhone and 54% likely to go Android.

http://profiles.google.com/nikcomp Tony Nicholas

The price of this phone will not gain anything to mass market nor is it targeting that demograph. A good point was made here that the cost oriented people can’t afford the data plans. They just want the phone. Unless Windows Phone can “deactivate” or give a way data then its competing with all the Android and Iphones of the world. Also the Lumia is “not” 200 dollars cheaper. Its only 99 dollars or in some cases the exact same price if we are talking the Iphone 4 or lower cost Androids. Lumia isn’t going to beat an Iphone 4

http://www.deepsoni.me Deep S.

I really really realllly wanna like it and buy it BUT the OS itself has flaws. I have a Samsung Focus right now and the OS doesnt just cut it.

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